Favourite loppets of 2012

Now that the ski season is over I took a few moments to look back at the loppets I did, and ended up working out a system to rank them. I came up with 5 criteria to rate the events:

1) Snow conditions

2) Loppet course

3) Loppet competition

4) My race experience

5) Loppet atmosphere

Each event was graded as:

1) Excellent

2) Above average

3) Average

4) Below average

5) Poor

The results for the loppets I did gave the following ranking:

1) Nickel Plate Loppet (6)

2) Sovereign Lake Loppet (7)

3) Overlander Loppet (9)

4) Reino Keski Salmi Loppet (11)

5) The Woppet (14)

6) P’ayak Loppet (16)

What were your favourite 2012 loppets?

Last ski of the season

Skied Cypress this morning with Guy and Trish. TM was skiing without poles and I was impressed at how well she was able to skate up Powerline without poles. GL and I headed to the upper trails where the fog somehow got even thicker. Guy was a climbing machine today, I lost sight of him in the fog on the climb up to the peak…I even stopped a couple times hoping I could wait for him to come back down…but he was graciously waiting for me at the top when I finally arrived. After blindly descending from the peak we did a bunch of laps of the triangle lakes trails where once again I was working hard to keep GL in my sights…he slowly distanced me on each lap, although I seemed to catch up on the biggish descent…bit of a surprise if my skis were faster since I hadn’t touched then since the week before The Woppet, and even then I only had soft CH10 wax, followed up by some liquid wax that I put on for The Woppet…was too lazy to do another hot wax. I still had great structure showing so maybe that was helping my descending speed. After GL and TM left I did another couple laps of the standard loop, then called it a season for snow skiing. Was really nice skiing with Guy today…I am a strong believer that training with others is an important key to improving. Maybe next winter some of the nordic racers would like to make group training sessions part of our loppet preparations.

Rather than hit the lake this afternoon for a short paddle we ended up prepping the living room for its new paint coating…an activity that is surprisingly taxing.

Allouette River

Paddled my Neloski on the Allouette River this morning. Katja, John, Jim, Ian and Jan did marathon K1 racing, well, John was on his surfski…and he got to spend the afternoon repairing the hole in his ski after a log decided to place itself directing in the path of his rudder. I paddled upstream exploring the different arms of the river, turning around when the water got too shallow. Really nice place to paddle…although at times it feels like paddling in a really big ditch. Would be an excellent place to paddle a marathon C2, so many arms and backwaters to explore…could imagine some quite creative race courses. I paddled downstream of the launch to where the Allouette flows into the Pitt River. There was a pair of swans defending a patch of the river, making themselves look really big by fluffing up their wings and flying low to the water smacking their feet on the surface…makes surprisingly loud noise. I’ve seen the damage an aggressive goose can do to a K1 after one poked its beak through Katja’s boat a few years back. These swans were nearly double the size of a goose, and were chasing away geese from their area…so I didn’t stick around to see what size hole a swan could put in my neloski.

Sunday the 15th is the last day for Nordic skiing at Cypress, so I’ll be heading up the hill for one last ski for the season…then it’ll be rollerskiing, but that will have to wait for another post!

The Woppet

Ok, that was definitely our last loppet of the season. Saturday was The Woppet at Whistler Olympic Park (Callaghan). I did the 30 km race while Katja did the 15 km distance, her first race on skate skis. Check out her report on her blog. The 30 km course was really good; click here to see a picture of the course. The start was mostly flat with lots of turns, a good way to get warmed up and helped to separate the racers before hitting the first climb thus minimizing the usual bottleneck that tends to take place at the first climb. The WOP groomers did a great job in preparing the trails despite what I expect were challenging freeze/thaw conditions that had been taking place recently. As comparison, Cypress’ trails were in rough shape Friday, chopped up with lots of ice chunks, conditions that I found difficult to glide on a single ski. There were some icyish sections, mostly on the upper trails and where the sun was shaded by trees. It wasn’t such a big deal when climbing, but it made for some nervous descending…making for some really loud snowplowing. Early in the race I had settled in behind GL with GF skiing just a bit ahead of us. I tried a couple times to pass without success. The trail widened as we headed on Madeley Creek Loop and few skiers moved past. There must’ve been about 6 of us together as we turned onto Norwegian Woods, with GL and another skier hitting the first climb side by side. I momentarily got stuck behind the other skier as he come to a near standstill on the steep climb, so I quickly moved over to follow GL. I could see GF and RR up ahead, and was trying to decide to be patient or to try upping the pace to catch them. I was not feeling like following someone else’s pace so when the opportunity arose I scampered quickly up a shorter section of hill to set off in pursuit. It wasn’t long before I couldn’t hear the skiers behind me and I was closing in on the two ahead. As we turned onto Madeley Road I was within 20 meters of RR, while GF was probably another 30 meters farther. These gaps stayed fairly steady until the twisty descents on How it Goes. I found the crusty trails quite challenging and really fast. My excessive snowplowing was losing me ground and it allowed SK to catch up. Oh well, I figured it was better to stay on my skis then fight back later in the course. As we turned back on to Madeley Road I slowed to let SK pass since he seemed better at descending. I followed him down the first big hill and through On the Way, then as we descended the last big hill of Madeley Creek Loop on which I felt fairly confident, I let my skis go and ended up flying past him just as we hit the left turn at the bottom of the hill. SK followed as we slowly closed the gap on RR. On the first climb on Brandywine View I found a quick tempo that allowed me to up the pace. As we hit the second climb we were right behind RR and GF. This steeper climb was not going as well for me and SK took the opportunity to scoot past, passing RR in the process too. The four of us made the turn onto Crosstrain within seconds of each other. The climb up Mountain View went by pretty quickly, then we had one last climb before the finish. This was pretty much the only climb I hadn’t practiced in the previous weeks, although I think it was the climb we did at the Payak Loppet…but it felt quite a bit longer this time. GF finished 14 seconds ahead of SK, followed by RR another 18 seconds later then another 12 seconds to me at 1:31:56. Full results can be found here. And what better way to finish off the event than to enjoy a nice BBQ lunch on the day lodge patio, soaking in the rays and the mountain view.

March 29…too much fresh snow!

Went direct from work to the hill tonight…was snowing fairly heavily and there was lots of fresh powder on the trails…probably 5-7 cm or so. The skiing was slow going…one of those adventurous back-country ski type sessions. Lots of offset skiing…both up and down the hills! It is quite amazing that we are still getting so much fresh snow…it is almost April!

Skiing in the sunshine

Skied Callaghan Saturday under super sunny skies, not a cloud in the sky…bluebird conditions according to my much more ski term savvy co-worker JP. I skated The Woppet course, well most of it, skipped the Neverland trail part… focused more on the hillier sections. Despite the sunny, warm conditions most of the trails were in really nice shape, I think due to the shade provided by the trees lining the trails. I had waxed for warm conditions, CH10 with V03 structure, figuring to encounter lots of slushy snow. My skis certainly glided well in the sun exposed areas, but these were far less frequent than the cold snow areas on which my skis ran sounding as though on styrofoam. The best snow conditions were found on the upper trails, Norwegian Woods and How it goes, in fact these trails were in as good a condition as I’d skied them all season. The Woppet course traverses Around the World and Brandywine View, with a big hill at the viewpoint…then it crosses over to Mountain View by way of a trail I’d not previously skied called Crosstrain…a narrow trail with tight downhill corners. The snow was soft enough that I could easily snow plow to limit my speed to navigate the turns with just enough control to be comfortable. Although the course is quite hilly, it seemed mentally less grueling than some other loppet courses, probably because each time while tackling a climb I could take comfort in the fact that I only had to ski it the one time. It is a bit daunting to be suffering on a climb then realize that I have to do the same climb again, and knowing I’m only going to be more tired the next time…yikes!

The trial run on The Woppet course has got me thinking about what wax to use for the loppet. Since most of the course was in the shade it might make sense to wax a bit colder than whatever the weather forecast will be. Although the Neverland trail portion of the course may be more exposed to the sun…if there will be any. The challenge is guessing whether it is better to have skis waxed for the colder snow, sacrificing speed on the sun exposed sections versus having skis waxed for the warmer snow, sacrificing speed on the shady sections. Or how about this for an off the wall idea…wax for the cold snow but then structure for wet conditions…could give skis that work okay on both cold and warm snow…or probably more likely to give skis that will work poorly on both.

Sunday morning we paddled Burnaby Lake then in the evening took advantage of Cypress’ last night skiing of the season. The snow was very good on most trails with some icy sections near Hollyburn lodge.

As Monday morning progressed I began to feel the effects of Sunday’s paddling: sore shoulders and back. By Tuesday this pain was overshadowed by sore legs from Monday’s running commute to work. Oh well, what is it they say in the movies…pain let’s us know we are still alive.

Still skiing in late March

Here were are on March 22, officially spring and the skiing is still excellent. There was fresh snow at Cypress for skating on Tuesday and again tonight, with the latter being on rather soft trails making for slow but still very nice skiing. Wednesday was good for both the skating Katja did and for my classic skiing. The tracks were really firm, very good for double poling, quite speedy glide and when my technique allowed I had good enough grip for kicking too.

Looks like we may have a change of plans for our last loppet of the season. Just found out about The Woppet at Whistler Olympic Park (Callaghan), offering 30 km, 15 km and 7.5 km race distances. The 30 km loppet course looks really cool…really hilly…but should offer an interesting challenge. I like that it includes cool parts of the Payak course (How it Goes and Loon Lake trails) as well as some trails we don’t ski so often (Brandywine View and part of Mountain View), and it looks to avoid some of the nasty parts of the Biathlon trails which were a bit sketchy at this year’s Payak. Seems they will only be tracking the 7.5 km course, so perhaps Katja will do the 15 km race on her new skate skis.

Financially it just makes more sense to do The Woppet instead of the Vancouver Island Loppet which I figure would run us about $600: ferry ($150), accommodation ($200), entry fees ($80) and food ($150).

Best of luck to our Nordic Racer comrades who are making the trek to the Van. Isl. Loppet…hope to see you at The Woppet on April 7.

March skiing

Well the time change has been nice, good to have the extra daylight after work. But spring weather hasn’t really arrived…and it is very much still winter in the mountains. I’m still approaching my skiing as though the Vancouver Island Loppet is on the agenda. Being that the race is 3 weeks away I spent the week focussing on volume, putting in lots of kms at low effort. Why do this so late in the season? Well, firstly it’s an excuse to ski more…I’m kinda liking gliding along the snowy trails, and secondly I’ve identified that my stamina has been lacking at recent loppets. I knew the 50 km Payak loppet was going to challenge my endurance but I was a bit surprised at how tiring the subsequent 30 km loppets felt. So I ended up skiing 4 nights this week, Monday through Thursday. Monday and Tuesday I skated for 1:45 and 2 hours, Wednesday was an hour of classic and Thursday was another 2 hours of skating. There was a ton of fresh snow Wednesday making it another of the nearly back-country skiing adventures in lots of soft snow with not much in the way of tracks…but good fun. Thursday was kinda cool in that the snow conditions were a bit slow at the beginning but as the night progressed the cooling temperature hardened up the trails making for quite speedy skiing…so much so that one particularly fast downhill corner was starting to freak me out, but I kept making myself take the corner at speed to get better used to it…fortunately I didn’t meet anyone coming the other direction. Saturday Katja, John and I skied Callaghan…and they had recently received something like 1.5 meters of fresh snow. The trails were in surprisingly good condition, although there was lots of variability in the snow at different parts of the trails. While Katja explored her new world of skate skiing, JG and I hit the trails on classic skis with JG quickly finding out that violet was not the right grip wax, before tackling the first big climb he stopped to apply some red wax. We met up with Terry and Woody (his dog) on Porters Glide and skied together for a while…until Terry scampered up a big hill at a wicked pace…I swear he actually accelerated when the hill got steeper. I stayed with him for a while, then fortunately noticed JG was nowhere to be seen as this is when he stopped to wax his skis…so this was the perfect excuse to let TL continue on without me…phew! JG and I continued on to Madelely Lake then returned by Norwegian Woods, along the way meeting up with Dan, Angela, Tom and Helen (and their friend Marie-Claire). Seems everyone was keen to take advantage of the good skiing offered by the late winter snowfalls. JG’s grip was starting to fade so we swapped to our skate skis. The trails were pretty good for skating except for some of the steeper hills where the snow was soft enough that our poles would penetrate deep into the snow providing an extra challenge to offset climbing the already steep trails. Eventually we made our way to “How it goes”, the upper trail system that takes us around Loon Lake…which required tackling another nasty climb. We called it a day a bit early, JG was feeling the effects his week of cycling everyday in the Arizona sun…some of his skiing specific muscles were rebelling against having been ignored for the past week. We met up with friends in the lodge while waiting for Katja to finish up her skiing…she’d swapped to classics for a bit after wiping out her skating muscles. Once again we finished off the day at Shady Tree in Squamish.

Originally I was planning to paddle today, but the 2 deg C morning temperature didn’t excite me so I dropped Katja off in Deep Cove to paddle with Jodi then continued on to Cypress. I haven’t often skied Cypress during daylight so took the opportunity to explore the upper trails. And guess what, to access the upper trails required tackling some big hills, some of which were quite steep. The trails were in excellent form…there is a real maze of trails up top, but they are all rather short. I returned on trails that took me to a place called West Lake…I must’ve descended for quite a while as I had to climb a massive steep hill to get back up to more familiar trails. I had to stop at least twice to rest while climbing this hill…I had no idea this trail even existed. I was surprised that the trails were not crowded despite the parking lot being very full. Perhaps the skiers are more spread out without the confines of the trails with lights, and there seemed to be lots of activity at the tubing park and there were lots of snowshoers scampering about.

Oh, and while driving the highway en route to the mountain an ambulance overtook the vehicles travelling westbound. Saw one moron who makes me question how our species has survived on this planet. Despite the long stretch of straight highway to allow us to see the approaching brightly lit up ambulance, this brown pickup stays in the left lane…eventually the ambulance changes lanes to pass on the right…the jackass proceeded to stay in the left lane the rest of the time I saw him. I hope the ambulance was heading to help this driver’s family member. If I could have a super power, it is times like this that make me wish I could make boneheads like this disappear, along with any genetic material passed on to future generations!

Sovereign Lake Loppet

We completed our 5^th and perhaps final loppet of the season on Saturday at Vernon’s Sovereign Lake Nordic Center, another 30 km skate event. The course consisted of two 15 km laps with a nice variety of hills, sort of flats and curvy trails. The weather forecast was a low of -6 and a high of -2. We arrived at the parking lot Saturday morning to 0 deg C and judging by the snow on the vehicles heading down the mountain, they had received close to 10 cm of fresh snow overnight. Our skis were waxed with LF7 then structured with V03. Based on the conditions our skis were probably waxed a bit on the cool side, but mine felt ok during my warm up. My plan for this race was to go easy the first lap, hoping to ski with a pack of similar speed skiers to learn the course then to hopefully use saved energy to ski more aggressively at suitable sections of the course. About 10 minutes into the first lap the pack had thinned out enough that I could slowly move past some skiers and eventually had fellow Nordic Racer GL in my sights. If my memory is correct, I passed GL then he moved past me on the first hill then I passed him again on the descent where it seemed my skis were actually fairly fast. At this point I was in a group of about 4 skiers with another couple skiers just ahead. As we negotiated some small climbs GL came past again so I slid in behind to follow him to the front of our group. As we entered the stadium most of the group seemed to stop at the feed station, I continued on aiming to close up on the 2 skiers just ahead. One of the skiers made a wrong left turn, returning to the course as I went by; the other skier was GF, another Nordic Racer and SLNC member. After a twisty descent the trail turned upward again and I closed the gap to GF. Staying to my strategy I tried to ski relaxed following GF, but soon more skiers joined our group. I suspect GF heard the other skiers too as he looked behind then seemed to slow his pace. Figuring he didn’t want to pull the group along I decided to move past to take a turn on the front. This happened just at a spot where I could do some of my favourite 2-skating which must’ve worked well for me as I never saw any of this pack of skiers again till after the finish. At what I would guess to be the 20 km point I was passed by the same skier who passed me at the similar point in last weekend’s loppet. We shared a laugh over this then he moved a bit ahead on the twisty descent. I kept him within sight till after the stadium where he opened up a bigger gap on the next tricky descent. Curiously another skier who we caught made the same wrong left turn and I passed him as he returned to the correct course. He stayed behind me until I botched a tricky turn then he opened up a small gap as we approached the final big climb. The gap between us stayed constant right to the finish where he crossed the line 7 seconds in front of me with my time being 1:37:09. GL came in next about 1.5 minutes later…maybe the amount of time he stopped at feed/water stations? (our joke!) Full results can be found here.

Near the end of my race I passed Katja who was using her crowns…she’d started the race in her grip taped Peltonens. I later found out that early in the race her grip zone iced up so she walked most of 5 km of the course then at the stadium swapped her skis (they were in the car) then continued her loppet. After her disastrous race last weekend I knew she wouldn’t want another DNF…I also knew she hates to be the center of attention for being the last skier on the course. So I changed into my classic skis and joined her for her second lap. After completing the first part of the lap and rentered the stadium she asked if we should continue…”Of course, you paid your $37.50, if you feel up to it then finish your loppet!” And she did…finishing dead last is infinitely better than DNFing…I’m sure we’ll get to read more about this in her blog which she is currently writing as we relax on the couch with the Brier curling final playing in the background.

We had an excellent visit with Keith and Mary at their place in Peachland Saturday evening. Mary spoiled us with an excellent prawn and chicken gumbo dinner then followed that up with a scrumptious omelette for breakfast…THANK YOU! On our last visit to Keith on the Nickel Plate Loppet weekend Mary had been on vacation in the Bahamas so we got to see the photos from her trip. For those who don’t know, Mary is an excellent photographer…their home is like a professional photo gallery…she is particularly effective at creating amazing canvas prints. Sunday morning the weather was windy and rainy, far from ideal paddling conditions so Katja and Keith bailed on their plans to launch the boats on the lake.

If the weather stays cold we may do the Vancouver Island Loppet at the end of March, but we won’t decide this until the last minute. If spring weather settles in then we may switch our focus to training for the upcoming surfski racing season.

Oh, another note about the Finite Finish tool. I think I mentioned previously that this tool differs from the press type tools in that it actually cuts the structure into the ski base. I noticed that the Finite tool imparted structured lasted longer than the pressed structure. I now also know that the Finite tool structure does indeed “reset” with hot waxing…so there appears to be no lingering effects from cutting the structure into the base…except for the memory of fast skis!

Pre-loppet preparations

Racing at Vernon’s Sovereign Lake Nordic Center this weekend, another 30 km skate race. Did an easy classic ski Monday evening then tonight did a fast skate session…body feels like it is recovering after the previous weekends’ races. Next will be to guess at a good wax/structure combination for whatever weather we’ll get Saturday morning.

Found cool videos of the major international loppets…including last weekend’s 90 km Vasaloppet in Sweden. The Marcialonga Loppet video is particularly cool…quite scenic, amazing trails and a wicked hill to greet the races with 2km to go of the 70 km race…and they had no kick wax by this point so had to double pole all the way up the big hill…just a brutal finish! Check out the videos here.

In World Cup racing news, today Canada’s Len Valjas came second in the classic sprint event in Drammen, Norway…and I mean right in the city…you gotta check out the video to see them race on the snow covered city streets.